Hi, I want to point out first of all that I'm not as familiar with Python as I should be, and for that reason I question a lot of things because I'm mainly a C++ programmer and I'm used to certain conveniences. Having said that...
I've always been curious (more so than annoyed) as to why one must explicitly specify a "self" parameter for member functions in a class in Python. This seems very "C" like to me, since to do object oriented programming in C you must devote one parameter to the object itself. In a higher order language like Python, I would not have expected (and thus am rather surprised) that this pattern would apply. Is there any particular reason why 'self' parameters must be specified explicitly? I am curious to understand the philosophy and design behind this. In Python 3 will there be any plans to eliminate this syntactic artifact? As I said, it's not terribly annoying to me but it seems like more of a hack than anything else. I would feel a bit better if I didn't have to see it. I don't mean to start any syntax wars or anything, so I hope everyone will keep an open mind and simply explain the design, rather than defend it. I'm interested in only facts, and not opinions. This is an example of a response I'm looking for: "The self parameter is required because the parser is a bit old and needs to know the exact object you're referencing" This is _not_ an example of what I'm looking for: "Specifying self is a great mysterious thing that we should never question. Do not question the language! The language is mighty! Don't bring C++ to Python!" I appreciate the community's time.
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